And Alex understood that Scotty Hausmann did not exist. He was a word casing in human form: a shell whose essence has vanished.

There are so many ways to go wrong. All we've got are metaphors, and they're never exactly right. You can never just Say. The. Thing.

What he needed was to find fifty more people like him, who had stopped being themselves without realizing it.

It's finished. Everything went past, without me.

Americans are less selfish than some of our politicians believe and will respond with reason and resilience to passionate clarity.

Structural dissatisfaction: Returning to circumstances that once pleased you, after having experienced a more thrilling or opulent way of life, and finding that you can no longer tolerate them.

I don't really know where my ideas come from. I start with a time and a place. That's what I need to get started, and an intellectual question.